— What’s he trying to do? a nurse said.
— Hold him, he’s bucking.
They held him. Lying there, in exquisite pain, he was recalling something from school, as a boy. Fellows out in the schoolyard, describing relations of the garden variety. Finus, who’d thought himself imaginative, was astonished.
— Come on, Bates, the farm boy twanged, back on his heels, a derisive squint, you can’t tell me you’ve never fucked a melon.
HERE WAS IVYLOY’S shop now, Finus’s own ectoplasmic reflection in the glass overlaying the image of Ivyloy himself, who stood at ease with one arm on the back of his barber chair in a dream, like a heron seeming to gaze at nothing just above Finus’s head. He woke up, smiled and raised his eyebrows, just about the only hair on his big round head set up on a long skinny neck and tall bony frame. Must be a hard irony to live with, a bald barber, Finus thought, and walked on in.
— Hey, boy, have a seat. Ivyloy popped the apron out and when Finus sat he draped it over Finus’s lap while he fastened a trimming collar around his neck, then he tied the apron, swung Finus around to look in the mirror.
— What’ll it be, just a shave, or a trim, too?
— Shave, Finus said, appraising himself. -Used to be I needed a haircut every other day.
— Used to be lots of things I needed every day, Ivyloy said. He leaned Finus’s chair back and laid a hot towel across his face. -Then I got married. He hummed to himself as he worked up a lather in the soap cup. Finus could see the TV reflected in the mirror. Three women were on a talk show set, fighting, two burly men trying to keep them apart. The big woman threw her chair at the littlest one, who deflected it with her own like a swashbuckling lion tamer.
— Why don’t you ever turn on the sound? Finus said.
— I don’t want to hear it, Ivyloy said. -Just like to have the pictures moving around.
Ivyloy bent to the task, stretching a bit of cheek here and there, taking care around the jawline, stretching the skin on Finus’s neck where it dewlapped. He concentrated on the jawbone behind Finus’s right ear. On the television two muscle-bound men came up behind the two women and put them into something like half nelsons. Ivyloy’s razor skritched down into the low part of his neck, near the shirt collar, and gave Finus a pleasant prickling. He closed his eyes, to the television, to Ivyloy’s fluorescent lightbulbs, to the slanted golden light through the barbershop’s window. And in some space of time could have been years he felt the tug of a new hot towel dabbing the shaving soap away from his skin. He opened his eyes, back in time.
Ivyloy dried Finus’s face, slapped a little Mennen onto his cheeks and under his jaw and chin, then rinsed and dried his own hands as Finus stood up and palmed out a ten, received his change.
— I heard you tell about Birdie and Midfield this morning, Ivyloy said.
Finus said, — I been writing them up.
— What’s the high points?
— Nothing spectacular.
— Hmph, Ivyloy said, looking out the window. -I know you. Be writing it, She once stood accused of poisoning her husband, her crazy in-laws threatening to dig up his body and hash it out.
Finus just stared at him.
Ivyloy said, — Don’t get riled, now.
Finus looked away. In a moment, he said, — And how’s Miss Sadie?
— She’s like you, you can’t kill her. You could run that woman over with one of them big things flattens out fresh pavement, one of them big flatteners, you’d just have you a new pothole when she riz’ up, shape of Sadie.
— Say she’s a tough one.
— I done tried to kill that woman a thousand times.
— Go on, now.
— Run her over, shot her, tossed her off a cliff up in Tennessee, give her rat poison and buried her in the backyard, she just comes back in that evening while I’m having my coffee, whups my ass like a stray dog. Woman’s tough, now. No, she’s gone kill me with time, her life’s mission is to outlive me.
Finus stood there nodding, looking at him.
— Now, I know you love that old gal, he said.
— Like my own life, Ivyloy said. -What there is left of it. Hey, you must a written me up years ago.
— I have not, Finus said. -You may be brain-dead but I can wait till you stop breathing, anyway.
Ivyloy looked a little pained, but he laughed.
— Aw, hell! he called out then, as if singing a note. -I don’t believe it. You got files on ever one of us.
Finus ignored him and glanced into the mirror.
— You didn’t even comb my hair.
— Did I cut it?
— No.
— Well, then, comb it yourself, your highness. I ain’t no hair stylist, I’m a barber. I cut hair.
— You’re not disposing me to knock out a good one on you when the time does come, Finus said.
— If you wait till I’m gone, which ain’t likely to happen, as old as you are, it won’t make a whole hell of a lot of difference to me, now will it? Ivyloy popped the apron in his hands and squinched his face up in the way he had that said, So there.